Sparky Anderson on baseball

Reds manager wrote this foreword on baseball

Nov. 4, 2010

Sparky Anderson: You know why I wasn’t big on the bunt? I didn’t like giving my team one less out. Outs? I guard outs with my life, especially those last six outs." / Enquirer file photo

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Sparky Anderson provided the foreword, as told to John Erardi, for our 2006 baseball preview section, Baseball by the Book, which talked about his way to play the game:

I’ve heard about “the book.” Baseball by the book. I didn’t have a book, didn’t go by the book, never once in my life copied anybody. My attitude was, "What if they’re wrong?" But some things I believed in.

Left-handed pitcher vs. left-handed hitter. The left-hander’s breaking ball runs away from the left-handed hitter. Makes it harder to hit. Righty-righty, same thing. Well, except for Clay Carroll. Clay was a righty, still is I guess, and he could get anybody out. Didn’t make no difference to Clay, and so it didn’t make no difference to me. I’d say, "Hawk" - that was his nickname - "Hawk, we need some all-star relief tonight." And he’d say, "You got it!" Boy, he was something else.

My eyes, that’s what I believed in. That’s what I went by. Leave your heart at home. Your heart’s for your family. I didn’t need no computer to tell me what my eyes were seein’.
The sacrifice bunt? No, I didn’t believe much in that, except for the pitchers, of course.

You know why I wasn’t big on the bunt? I didn’t like giving my team one less out. Outs? I guard outs with my life, especially those last six outs.

But some outs I give you. Like at the beginning of an inning. Joe Morgan walks by and says, “Skip, when I get on” – see, when I get on, not if I get on, and, oh yes, he would get on, walk, hit, whatever – “don’t bunt me over; I got this guy” – the pitcher – “down pat. I’ll get myself over.” And then, when Joe took that lead and shook up the pitcher – who knew there was no way he could keep Joe on first, but he’d try, anyway – well, when Joe got to second, and he always got to second, that’s when I’d bunt him over, and the next guy or the guy after that would hit the sacrifice fly.

Boom! Game over, we go home.

Talent makes the manager. You get all the talent out of your players that you can. That’s all that managing is. Getting every ounce out of them that you can. Tony LaRussa and Bobby Cox, I marvel at them. They’re really good. They get the most out of their talent, year after year after year.

The hit-and-run? Now you’re talkin’. I believed in the hit-and-run. I saw John Bench hit three home runs on hit-and-runs. See, when John was having trouble at the plate it was because he was coming off the ball, you know, pulling off with his left side. Give him the hit-and-run sign and he’d stay on that ball because on the hit-and-run the hitter needs to make contact, otherwise the baserunner, who is running on the pitch, could easily be thrown out by the catcher unless the runner’s fast.

Stealing a base? Yeah, I loved the stolen base. Larry Shepard, our pitching coach, said, "You took a league that wasn’t moving and got it moving." The stolen base gave us another way to beat you. You aren’t always going to hit. But the speed, the speed’s always there. They say I was three years ahead of the rest of the league, having more stolen bases than home runs, but I wasn’t doing it just to be doing it. I was doing it because I knew you couldn’t stop it.

Captain Hook? Yeah, I used what I had. We weren’t blessed with the Dodgers’ starting pitching, but we had a really deep bullpen. People say I was ahead there, too, five years ahead of the league, you know, having more saves than complete games, but I didn’t do it because it was in some book. I did it because we didn’t have but a couple of guys who could go much past six innings.

The other thing is, you got to know what the other guy’s got. You got to know what the opposing team has available to them to try to get themselves back into it. Coach Georgie Scherger called it having the last six outs. Get us to those last six outs and we’re going to beat you, because our last six outs are better than your last six outs, and we know what we want to do.

So, yeah, you manage what you got, and you know what the other guy’s got so you can trap him. That was the way I managed. That was the book I used.